We recently covered the book、『シベリア出兵の史的研究』(細谷千博、岩波現代文庫、2005) in my class. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the first class, so I’ll make some comments on the latter half of this book. The book tries to address what it calls the “doubled diplomatic posture” (二重外交) of Japan’s politicians. In this case the writer is mainly discussing Japan’s military expedition to Siberia. The most interesting and controversial part of this book, I think, is found in chapter 6. It’s discusses a debate between Hara Kei and Ito Miyoji. It describes how Ito Miyoji persuaded and prevailed against Hara Kei. The debate proceeds mostly through passages taken from the 外交調査会. As you may know, Hara Kei was strongly opposed to the シベリア出兵（Siberian expedition）. It was a big concern at the time of how to persuade him not to object to Ito’s plan.
There’re several narrations and explanations of it, I’ll give you some sentences that I couldn’t understand easily. In a scene during which Ito and Hara adjusted their opinions (p.196-197), Ito gave an amendment of his asnwer to Hara.
「一、チェツク軍支援ノ為緩急ニ応シ浦塩以外ノ方面ニ出兵スル事。
二、形勢ノ発展次第ニ依リ更ニ増援ヲ必要トスルコトアルヘキ事。」
Hara wanted Ito to erase these two sentences as was to be anticipated , but Ito instead presented Hara with a slightly different one.
「 チェツク軍支援ノ為浦塩以外ニ出動シ且ツ形勢ノ発展ニ伴ヒ増援スルノ必要アルヘキヲ予想シ欣然応諾スルト共ニ宣言書案ニ関スル米国政府ノ所見ヲ尊重スルノ意ヲ表明ス。」
Hara agreed to this revision, and Ito thus won the tug of war. I don’t quite understand how these two sentences are substantially different. As you already know and may have experienced yourselves in Japan, 言い回し is common in ordinary life and even in diplomatic text and speaking. You can also see many 言い回し in this textbook. One of my goals is to better understand this kind of 言い回し found in diplomatic or other scenes throughout Japanese history, especially from the end of the Edo through to our present day.
細谷千博、『シベリア出兵の史的研究』
